Sheik's Rule

by Ryshia Kennie

  She handed the phone to him.

  “They used a knife,” she said. She didn’t wait for him to answer for they both knew that had been in the report. “Interesting choice of weapon. Silent, but it also takes surprise or strength, ideally both, to be effective. At least to do it quietly with little struggle.”

  “It was dark, past midnight. She was almost home and her security was taken by surprise.”

  “Will he make it?” she asked, referring to the man who was now in the hospital.

  “I went to see him. He’s critical.” His fist clenched. “Ahmed was a good man—is,” he amended. “He tried to help, to stop them. That’s what I assume from how it all ended. He wouldn’t have done otherwise.” The thought of one of his employees so close to death was gut-wrenching. There wasn’t anything about this case that wasn’t. He cleared his throat. “And then he tried to help me, give me information...but he’s in such rough shape.”

  Emir’s voice was tight even to his own ears and he could still feel the pain of seeing someone he’d known for years struggling to live and yet still wanting to help. “Ahmed would do anything for Tara.” He took a breath as if controlled breathing would somehow change how he felt. “It will kill her to find out what has happened to him.” He stopped for a moment, trying to regain control of his emotions.

  “He said something?” She looked at him with eyes alight at this new piece of information. “That wasn’t in the report. You spoke to him after,” she said, confirming what was already clear. “What did he say?”

  He knew that she was anxious for a clue that would get this investigation on the road. They both were.

  “He said ‘desert’ and then, the irony of it all is that the next words weren’t clear, but it sounded like a name—Davar. I don’t know what Ahmed was trying to tell me. He coded almost immediately after.” He clenched his fists, his gaze somewhere over her shoulder, his mind back to that hospital room. “They were working on him when I left.”

  If what he’d heard and what he now suspected was right, the desert was where they needed to go. But the Sahara was a big place—it was like saying they were going to Europe.

  “Emir.”

  Her voice was like a caress and he took a step away. His jaw tightened and he fought not to send her home then and there.

  “I’ve never heard of it as a place. I imagine you ran a check of local surnames?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Maybe I heard wrong. He was half mouthing—could barely speak.” He shook his head.

  “It will be sunset soon. We can’t be heading out, not in the dark and with no idea where we’re going.”

  “Agreed.” But she didn’t move. Instead she stood there, considering. “Was it a name—place name, I mean? And if so could it have been something close—not exactly what you heard?”

  “I don’t know. There hasn’t been much time to examine the possibilities.”

  “You had to pick me up and then there was the small shoot-out,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said with a slight smile. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” She frowned.

  “For at least an attempt at humor. Oddly, it helps.” There was more that helped, but he feared it also distracted—her lithe figure for one...and most of all her sharp intelligence and quick wit. He was still going to tear a strip off Adam, but he felt slightly more confident than he had an hour ago.

  “Can I see her quarters?”

  “There was nothing—”

  She cut him off. “Trust me.”

  * * *

  “THIS WAY,” he said.

  Kate noticed that he didn’t temper his pace. At six-one, he was only three inches taller than her, yet his legs covered distances quickly.

  She strode beside him, thankful for long legs that sometimes made finding jeans a challenge. This time, they were a gift that allowed her to keep up as they headed toward the sprawling mansion that was a mix of old and new. The size and opulence was like nothing she’d seen in the working-class neighborhood of Detroit where, except for the stint in the Middle East, she’d grown up, or like Jackson, Wyoming, where she now lived. Her gaze swept the area, focusing on security details, potential breaches, rather than the opulence of the building and the grounds.

  “There are sensors on the wall that monitor activity inside and out.”

  His arm swept the five-acre square where as far as she could see, a cream-colored masonry fence surrounded the complex’s grounds.

  “The cameras are on twenty-four-seven.”

  If Kate hadn’t spent years immersed in Moroccan culture and, as a result, been aware of what “rich” in Morocco meant, she would have been pie-eyed with disbelief. This wasn’t the wealth of royalty, and by no means a palace, but it was more than 90 percent of the population of Morocco would ever see.

  She could understand why the security was as intense as it was and why Tara had been taken. The estate’s opulence combined with their business, Nassar Security, added to riches that could be hugely tempting to anyone with a criminal bent. She knew the history of the company, knew that the twins had begun it and then, with the inclusion of their brothers, built a business that had taken on more high-profile cases than any other security company of its kind in either the western United States or Northern Africa.

  “Interesting—about the security I mean.” Her gaze met his. “And yet they took her at a place near where the cameras didn’t reach.”

  His jaw clenched. “I’d planned to add security cameras there, too. But somehow it felt like overkill. Now, it’s a glaring error.”

  “Cameras wouldn’t have stopped—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “But alarms and—”

  “You couldn’t have known,” she interjected as she tried to reassure him.

  But the anger that emanated from him made it clear he didn’t want reassurance.

  “One of Tara’s security is dead and the other, the only witness, is fighting for his life,” Emir said. “It was an unforgivable lack of judgment on my part. I should have...” His voice dropped off as if he couldn’t, or didn’t, want to finish.

  “What? Known? Are you psychic?”

  “No, I don’t believe...” He stopped and turned to look at her, his brow furrowed. “You were being facetious.”

  “The man who lived. He was knifed in the chest. I’d guess that he was defending her.”

  Emir shook his head. “He shouldn’t have been there. Ahmed was estate security. He volunteered to go with Tara that night. It wasn’t his usual job but one of our regulars called in sick.”

  “That wasn’t in the file,” she said.

  “Like I said, some of the details weren’t available, at least not then. I wanted an agent on the first flight here. I couldn’t wait to fill in the blanks.”

  Nor could he wait to ensure the sex of the agent, either, she thought dryly, admonishing herself.

  To be fair, after the opposition at the airport, he now seemed to have accepted her for what she could do and had at least stopped talking about sending her back because of her sex. It appeared that she was the only one who had yet to get over that faux pas, but in her mind it had been a big error. Enough, she told herself. She needed to focus on the key elements of the case.

  “The security seems airtight. Explains why they didn’t take her here,” Kate said as they walked through the massive entrance that led to the Al-Nassar family home.

  She glanced at Emir as he ran a hand down the dark stubble that covered his chin and jaw. He was an extremely good-looking man, but then, she’d known that. Now he looked agonized, worry lines creasing his forehead. She wanted to say something to comfort him but there was nothing that would help until his sister was home—safe. No matter what he thought, it hadn’t been his error. It had been Tara’s. His sister had made an err
or by ditching her security and that could cost her her life.

  Still over a quarter of a mile away, she took in the scope of the house, more aptly a mansion, and its surrounding grounds and thought there was some irony in its sweeping size when only half the family lived here at any given time. She knew the majority of the family spent a great deal of time overseas. On most days she imagined that Emir was vastly outnumbered, not by family, but by the staff necessary to maintain such an estate.

  “Emir?”

  He looked at her as if he had been somewhere else. And she imagined he was fighting his own fear—fear for his sister’s well-being and for her very life. He was too close emotionally and that was why he needed her. Her ability to move ahead without emotional attachment to the victim, his sister, whom she’d never met, was critical.

  “And yet none of this security kept Tara safe,” Emir said and both of them could hear the irony in his voice.

  “You couldn’t protect her night and day.” She touched the back of his arm, the heat of his skin seeming oddly intimate. He tensed and she dropped her hand. “She’s a grown woman.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Rashad approaching.

  “I’ll run you up to the main house,” Rashad said as he walked with them the remaining few feet to the guardhouse. He opened the door to the Hummer that Dell had so recently left, for Kate. His dark eyes were full of questions and yet he asked nothing.

  Within minutes they were driving around a circular drive that had been hidden behind massive palm trees. They skirted a white-marble fountain that was devoid of water.

  “Maintenance issues?” she asked Emir. “Your estate is immaculate and yet the fountain isn’t working?”

  “The plumber was called but I put the repair on hold.”

  She turned. “Anyone else who’s been here recently? Aside from staff, I mean.”

  “No one, except the plumber two days ago,” he said.

  “Was Tara around when the plumber was here?”

  “Yes, I believe she was. I don’t remember her coming out of her quarters, though,” Emir said. “The plumber had done work for me on numerous occasions. We’ve contracted him for years—in fact, I believe he worked for my father, too. Anyway, he didn’t stay long. I decided against the repair. I hadn’t planned to be here for this long.”

  “By here, you mean Marrakech?”

  “Morocco, actually,” he said. “If all this hadn’t happened, I might have met you in Wyoming. I’d planned to go there. A recent case involving the Wyoming secretary of state’s brother piqued my interest.”

  “Faisal will have his hands full. It’s high-profile,” Kate said. “So, plumbing is minor considering everything that’s come down in the last week.”

  “You could say that.” He shrugged as if it were all of no consequence while the tension around his eyes and mouth made him look almost feral, like a man who would protect anyone or anything whose heart belonged to him. She had to force her thoughts back to what he was saying.

  “I promised Tara that when she was home for summer vacation, I’d have the fountain up and working. She finds it soothing.”

  “Was anything else happening that day or any day after?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  The Hummer stopped in front of the mansion with its huge columns and sprawling white-tiled front entrance.

  She glanced back at Emir as she stepped out. She wondered if he felt like he’d been interrogated, for, without meaning to, she knew that was what she had done.

  He stepped ahead of her to open the massive wood-and-brass door. In the seconds that it took, her gaze ran the length of his muscular back and she had to pull her eyes away from the lush, seductive curl of his dark hair as it flirted with the edge of his collar.

  Get a grip, she told herself as she walked past him and into a vast tile-and-marble area that stretched beyond the colossal entrance doors, eclipsing them in opulence. For a moment her reason for being here was clouded by her feeling of disbelief. Her life, her two-bedroom apartment, compared to this? The juxtaposition of the two realities wasn’t even fathomable. This was a fantasyland, a different world that she’d known of but of which she couldn’t have imagined until now. It was laughable, really, eight hundred square feet that she lived in compared to this. The comparison was as unstoppable as it was fleeting, rather like looking at a magazine rack and seeing one on budget travel lined up beside another that was geared to luxury resorts.

  She pushed the thoughts out of her mind and instead considered everything this wealth brought—including the case she was now assigned to. She knew fortune such as this did not come without responsibilities. She also knew there were expectations here and duties Emir had inherited from his father, and even from his grandfather—a responsibility to the people, to give back. She knew Emir took his responsibilities seriously; she’d heard Adam speak of it. It explained why Emir seemed so contained, controlled—older than the thirty-one years she knew him to be.

  She looked around, taking in the length and width of the area even from the entrance. The hallway seemed to stretch indefinitely and, rather than the chill one would expect from such a large space, the air was warm.

  As they moved down the corridor she couldn’t get over the size. The estate was massive, more imposing than she’d expected, both inside and out. There had been no available pictures, even of the grounds; nothing she could get from the internet. Oddly, even the area outside the gates hadn’t been Google-mapped. She guessed that had been Emir’s doing.

  But it was the pictures some yards from the entrance that made her pause; they were the only decor in the hallway that stretched easily a half a city block. She stopped for a minute as she looked at a picture of a man and a woman, middle-aged—the woman looking younger and very much like the photos she’d seen of his sister, Tara.

  It was odd that the pictures were here in this luxurious but barren corridor with the only other decor, the oval, brass entranceway doors facing them not ten feet away. “These are your parents?”

  “Yes, taken only months before their accident. Of course,” he added, “that was a long time ago.”

  Six years wasn’t a long time ago. Was he distancing himself from the trauma of the loss? She supposed it didn’t matter either way. What was important were the facts. She’d read about the traffic accident on a treacherous, isolated mountain road and the resulting fire that had tragically taken both Emir’s parents.

  “Tara looks very much like her mother.” Kate stared at the picture as if the answer to saving Tara was somehow in the dark eyes of the beautiful woman who stared back at her.

  For a moment she was caught by the woman’s image. Her eyes reflected the same rich ebony as her eldest son. Her smile was the same as Tara’s picture in the file she carried. But whatever answers or secrets those eyes might hold wouldn’t be forthcoming from a picture.

  “Kate.”

  Her name was a command as he waited for her to catch up. She was reminded of how few people called her that. Allowing Emir to call her by her given name had surprised even her. She’d gone by her initials since she was a child. She couldn’t tell when or why it had begun, but the initials had served her well in the profession she’d chosen as an adult. Now, K.J. just was and it was odd that Emir had become one of the exceptions. At another time she’d have analyzed what that might mean.

  She walked beside him, her pace matching his. White columns ran from the tiled floor to a ceiling that soared over twenty feet above them. Their footsteps echoed on the ceramic tile as they turned left and into another corridor as vast as the first. This one brought them to within fifty feet of another massive door not quite as large as the entrance and this time without the brass. Instead these doors were wooden with gold glittering in a heart design over both panels.

  “Tara’s apartment,” Emir ann
ounced. “This was the women’s area centuries ago,” Emir said as if he’d seen the disbelief in her look and wanted to confirm what she already knew. “Tara thought it laughable to claim for herself this area that, a hundred or so years ago, was a harem.” He shook his head. “She’s always about being contrary.”

  “Contrary?” Kate frowned.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Emir said. “We are all more Western in our thoughts—the family, I mean—but Tara wanted to change the thinking, the old ways, that exist elsewhere. Chauvinism that still hasn’t disappeared. She wasn’t content to let modern ideas remain within the walls of this compound or within the boundaries of Marrakech, for that matter.”

  The pain in his voice was palpable.

  “We’ll get her home.” She met the troubled look in his eyes and hesitated, feeling the need to comfort. She dropped the thought when she saw the anger in his eyes. Anger was not something she could change with simple words or a touch and, at this stage, she suspected it would be unwelcome.

  As they entered Tara’s quarters, it was as if facts were his safety net as he commentated as they walked. “Built almost two hundred years ago, this area is pretty much impenetrable to outsiders. Always has been. We’ve upgraded, of course. This section was built in the mid-1800s. We’ve put in a computer-monitored surveillance system in the last few years, added motion detectors and thermal laser-heat detectors. It was all we needed without going overboard. At least, so we thought...” He shook his head, lines bracketing his mouth.

  “You couldn’t have known.”

  “Don’t placate me,” he growled. “I should have known. It was my job to know.”

  The security keypad was imbedded in a teak panel arched into a design that looked rather like a small pseudo door set alongside the door frame.

  Emir punched in a code.

  The doors in front of them opened with the whir of a hidden motor, leading to a smaller teak doorway and a wooden door that, while arched like the first set of doors, was smaller, singular and, as a result, much less imposing than the first set. Emir unlocked the door, flicked on the light and stood aside for Kate to enter first. Inside was the sleek metal lines and modernity of a penthouse apartment without the extravagantly opulent touches of the entranceway.